To help homeowners avoid buyer’s remorse, Localize has launched personal real estate advisor Robin, which fuses human intelligence with previously unavailable data to help buyers anticipate future events and navigate the process of purchasing a home or investment property in New York City.
“Robin is the superhero of personal real estate advisors; it isn’t just a feature but a team of talented individuals with relevant research and insights at their fingertips,” said Asaf Rubin, CEO of Localize. “By combining this unique data store with real human intelligence, Robin can be a personal house hunter, savvy advisor and real estate wiz. The perfect home is out there and Robin will find it.”
Unfortunately, more than 40% percent of home buyers experience buyer’s remorse within two years of purchasing their home, according to a recent Bankrate.com survey of home buyers.
“No two home buyers are the same. Why should every home listing provide the same info? Simply offering the same old details such as square footage, number of rooms, and asking price is no longer sufficient,” said Omer Granot, president and COO of Localize. “Some buyers want to know if a home has natural light, great views and access to parks; others want to know if there is street-level noise or nearby construction. All of them want answers before they ever visit a home. We have made it our mission to deliver.”
Localize secured more than 400 publicly available data sources and purchased access to dozens of additional proprietary data sources, including truck routes, flight paths, local zoning, permit information and many more. The company’s data scientists and urban planners then created Insight Engine, a set of new artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms that digests this information to produce new insights and even predict future events, such as new construction blocking views, the light in individual apartments and permits for commercial uses. The average home listing has eight unique insights. In addition, a Localize home listing features dozens of attributes and parameters about each apartment, from architectural style through amenities, building characteristics and policies, contract stipulations and much more. All of these attributes are then used by its recommendations system to match each user with the perfect home for their needs.
Resting on top of everything is the brand-new Robin interface, which is designed to interact with home hunters the way they would with a trusted advisor. People can talk to Robin or hone and refine search engines either on localize.city or through SMS text messages. Robin will take this information and mine Localize’s database and match buyers not only to suitable properties but to real estate agents, mortgage lenders, home inspectors, appraisers, insurance agents and more. Robin started helping buyers two months ago as part of a beta test and already has matched 100 buyers to vetted buyer agents.
